


White as Snow

by Demus



Category: Tintin - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demus/pseuds/Demus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>After the goodbyes came whiteness, white as snow. How could the world be so confusing?</i><br/>Response to the 'Tintin meets Snowy' prompt on the kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White as Snow

It began as a day of goodbyes, not helloes. 

Cases, half-packed, littered the floor, spilling their contents in haphazard piles across the singular Oriental carpet. Grey light, wintry-pale, seemed to settle like fine dust over the myriad curiosities that decorated the hallway, muting and softening. Tintin clung to the spindly wooden arms of a grotesque idol, made friendlier by a Paisley scarf about its neck, and watched the servants bustle to and fro in determined confusion. 

It was going to be a day full of goodbyes, and he simply did _not_ to think about it. 

In the midst of the chaos was his mother, tall and steadfast. He waited for a break in the bustling and ran to her, the hem of her coat scratchy in his hands as he tugged for her attention and she bent down to lift him into her arms, the scarf in which he buried his face rich and sweet with her perfume. “Good morning,” she said, her arms firm and tight, holding him with ease. Nothing, he thought, could break her grasp, nothing except _her own choice_...He pressed his face harder into her scarf, hard enough to feel the rough intricacies of the smooth weave, and she began to rock ever-so-gently from side to side. “What is it?”

“You're going away for a long time, aren't you mama?”

The rocking continued, soothing, lulling. “Well, if the world could be travelled in a holiday week, it would not be nearly so exciting a place.”

He considered this. “But...But if it so large, however will you get to the jungle?”

“First, I shall take a car, my love,” a kiss to his forehead, “then a train, my love,” a kiss to his cheek, “then a boat, my love,” a kiss to his mouth, “and then, my love, I'll sail the seas until we strike land and find a jungle fit for adventure.”

He squirmed in her grip, all sadness forgotten as he wriggled with excitement at her kisses and her delight in him, and she touched her nose to his, laughing along with his giggles “Mayn't I come? I want to see the leopards!” _Much more than that,_ he thought, but to see splot-spotted _leopards_ in their dappled shadows, to walk in the leaf-carpeted halls of their forest home...

His mother's smile dimmed, dulling his excitement. “Now, Augustin,” she said, the old argument heavy in her voice, “You know that your schooling must come first. However will you make yourself understood, without languages? How will you read maps, without geography? Explorers need a good education.”

Tintin had wrinkled his nose at the hated given name (one simply could _not_ be called 'Augustin' and appear in the papers!), now he felt his lips curve downwards, disappointment as old as the argument hard and cold in his stomach. “But mama-”

“Let us not quarrel,” she said, as firmly as her arms' embrace, and he subsided, unhappily. “Oh, Tintin, do not slump so – soon, very soon, you will be free of school and I'll take you to all of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world.”

“Do you promise?”

Understanding him instantly, she pressed her forehead to his, close enough that her bright green eyes filled his vision, and said, “I promise, dear heart.”

So it was a promise. And Tintin's mother _always_ kept her promises.

*

After the goodbyes came whiteness, white as snow. How could the world be so confusing?

Tintin stared at the white crystals that clung tenaciously to his woollen mittens, watching them distort and deform as they melted in the heat from his skin. How could anything be as 'white as snow', when snow turned to transparency at the slightest urging? The world was so very strange, and none of the words he'd learned thus far seemed to fit.

He stood for a moment longer, studying the soft-prickle coating that covered his hands, then brushed a mittened hand on his scarf, shaking his head; he would very much like to meet the person who came up with such a silly notion and ask him (or her) why exactly he (or she) had ever thought to describe snow as white. 

But it would have to wait. That strange world beckoned, tall as the sky and wider than the horizon, crisp-fresh, the familiar twists and turns of the lanes turned mysterious by the snowfall. It had been made anew, made strange and beautiful, and his feet itched with the urge to explore. Snow dusted the air, hesitant somehow, drifting with each capricious kiss of the breeze; December and snow and the big wide unbelievable _everything_ at his feet, what could be better than this?

He jumped down from the step, remembering a moment after he landed that he'd wanted to be careful of the snow, lifting one feet clear and looking at the perfect boot-print with regret – it had been so pretty and he'd spoiled it. _Still_ , he mused, as snowflakes crowded the shallow impression, _at least it won't be spoiled for long._ Thus comforted he set off, unmindful now of his footprints, eyes wide for wonder.

Wonder was swift to find him. Winter's queer silence was broken by the softest of sounds, which he followed, head cocked to better hear it. It grew louder and louder, a quiet, weak sort of sound, all sadness and sorrow, and it ended at a hedge. Kneeling down, unmindful of the snow that soaked into his trousers, Tintin parted the branches from which the noise seemed to be coming; there, shivering and mewling in the cold and utterly, helplessly alone, was a tiny puppy.

The dog was clearly a baby; its eyes were milky-blind, its ears folded back against its head and it was barely bigger than one of Tintin's hands. The boy reached for it in a heartbeat, shocked by the deathly chill radiating from the little creature, and tucked it inside his coat, cradling it with more care than he had shown to anything.

“Don't worry,” he said, as the puppy cried and cried, wriggling pathetically in his arms, “Don't worry, I'll look after you. You're safe now.”

**Author's Note:**

> You absolutely _must_ take a look at [ this beautiful depiction of the final scene](http://fav.me/d4oe13q). It is quite possibly the most adorable thing I have ever seen.


End file.
